


Hubris

by A_Hitsugaya



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen, Slow To Update, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:27:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23906173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Hitsugaya/pseuds/A_Hitsugaya
Summary: Edward and Alphonse, all things considered, were incredibly lucky. In the end, Al got his body back, Ed lived to see it, and they both moved on with their lives. But what if they weren't so lucky?What if the price of Al's soul was more than Ed could pay?An AU where Truth decides that Al and Ed's luck has run out before they can even get started.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	1. Prologue: From Out of the Mouth of Truth

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone, 
> 
> Welcome to my third ever posted writing endeavor. The state of the world has given me a lot of time to think and even more time to pick up an old hobby. This project will be an exercise in discipline and a chance to pursue a new writing style. Let me know what you all think!

Human beings are arrogant.

For millennia—eons even—the truth of this statement has been proven again and again. With every new experiment, every new iteration of the human project, the depth of self-centered pontification they prove themselves capable of increases exponentially. 

There was a time when this wasn’t so.

They started off _so_ promising. They were curious but respectful—reverent even. They took their cues from the world around them, existing in harmony with all things, living and non. “All is one and one is all,” they said. Then something changed.

About 50 iterations ago—give or take a few billion years—they discovered it. Greed. At the time I didn’t take much note. I knew all that was, all that was to be, but one soul—one seemingly _insignificant_ little soul—decided that what they wanted out of life was more important than the wants and needs of _everything_ around them. The reaction was explosive. And the backlash? _Astronomical_. 

The addition of a single unexpected element—a single arrant thought—changed everything I knew to be and everything I knew was to come. It took centuries before I’d finished sifting through the influx of information caused by this change in direction and I still haven’t figured out how I didn’t see it coming. 

From that moment on, I found myself unable to re-set the clock. It seemed that there were things outside my control after all—that even my unquantifiable power, existence, and influence was limited. I found myself unable to scrap the basic design as I had countless times before. I was still able to change key elements. I could grant them power (personal or collective). I could take it away. I could change the source of that power or the impetus behind its discovery, but ever since that one human, every iteration has been derailed by their unearned sense of _ownership_.

I have to acknowledge that some of the subsequent iterations have been interesting. 

One of them saw the entire universe come together to stop a genocidal purple warlord with delusions of grandeur (he called it _balance_ ).

Another contained powerful beings crafted in the image of animals—that universe kinda went off the rails though, I’ll admit it. The last time I actually focused on it there was something about a murderous tree and space aliens but I digress.

Other iterations saw, at turns: superpowered death-defying aliens with a fixation on fighting, costumed vigilantes convinced that they were the only thing standing between the Universe and chaos (this one was apparently completely alright with children fighting those battles and contained a mathematical equation that _answered the universe_ ), one where bored demons dropped books capable of delivering death at the stroke of a pen into the human world, and even one where people fought each other to the death over numbered headbands.

One of the most interesting iterations, however, is also one of the simpler ones. 

It looks a lot like the iteration you find yourself in. Humans managed to band together around the idea of greed—of putting the individual before all else—long enough to develop those steam engines that I’ve seen lead to weapons so terrible the very canvas upon which I’d painted the iteration would scorch in the event of its utilization. This iteration, however, I gifted with power of another sort: Alchemy.

In this iteration, technological advancement was both bolstered and tempered by the ability to deconstruct and reconstruct almost instantaneously. I thought I’d try tying power to knowledge—to equations and study, mathematics and intelligence. I thought the concept of making that power accessible to anyone who could discipline themselves enough to learn how to use it might be the key to establishing some balance. 

I was wrong, but this iteration grew to be so interesting that I let it split—let it play out multiple times just to see how some small (almost insignificant) changes would impact the whole thing.

You see, there was a set of brothers in this cluster of continuities, and no matter how many times I let the situation play, they always managed to speak with me directly. Sometimes they came together, other times they came alone—but they always came on one another’s behalf.

In _this_ iteration, I decided I wanted to see what would happen if I broke the two of them apart. Permanently.

The results were _fascinating_.


	2. Catalytic Winds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Edward comes to terms with his monumental failure, truths are revealed and events the like of which will change the world are set in motion.

I knew it had failed the moment it threw me back through the gate. The pain was immediate, the smell of iron overwhelming and the silence deafening. There was nothing left of Al’s body but a slowly closing gap in the blood covering the basement floor. What’s worse is that the sadistic bastard took my arm anyway.

No mother. No brother. No arm and no leg.

Months of study, of late nights and precise measurement, of theoretical work complicated enough that people three times my age would have written it off as a fool’s errand, and I had nothing to show for it. Those people would have been right though, wouldn’t they have? It _was_ a fool’s errand, and everyone around me paid the price.

It took me an hour to drag myself from my spot on the floor to the front porch, a deep crimson path of blood streaked behind me like a brush stroke on a blank canvas. By then, it had begun to monsoon and I had begun to lose feeling in my remaining limbs.

I didn’t care though. Why should I have? I was alone and there was nothing that could bring back what I had lost.

Nevertheless, I continued to struggle. To drag myself as far as I could before passing out. Maybe I was trying to outrun what I’d done, what I’d thrown away for a chance at something that everyone knows is impossible. I was greedy, and that greed consumed _everything_ in a flash of bright lights and a swish of shadowed hands.

They say I made it halfway down the path between my house and the Rockbell’s place before I gave out.

I don’t remember that.

The last thing I can recall is looking up into a sky and seeing that blank faced grin staring back at me through a break in the rainclouds. _Huh_ , I thought before the ground reached up to catch me, _So that’s why the moon is white_. 

~

The next time I woke up it was in the patient room at the Rockbell’s house. I recognized it immediately, having spent most of my life sleeping there after staying too late playing with Winry and…oh. Oh yeah.

The reality of my situation hit me like a sledgehammer, and I found myself quickly bereft of breath. I could see black edging in on the peripheral of my vision as the heart monitor to which I was attached began blaring. That only made me panic more, my blacking out vision reminding me violently of the hands that tore my brother to pieces—that dragged me through that giant stone gate twice in one day.

Before I could suffocate or tear my own eyes from their sockets in an attempt to stop the hands from pulling me in again, Granny Pinako and Winry came bursting through the door. I know that they were screaming. I could see their mouths moving, but I couldn’t hear anything but the echoing slam of that damned gate closing in my face, Truth grinning at me as I was dragged through it.

It was Winry’s hand moving across my face in a quick slap that brought me out of it. All of a sudden I could hear again. Pinako stood to my left, thrown into sharp relief by the flashes of lightning regularly visible from the window at her back. “It’s over Edward, you’re safe. You’re alive” she murmured in a never-ending litany while Winry stood to the right of my bed, her hand held shakily in the air from having hit me while tears streaked from the panic-filled eyes of a frightened child.

She looked so young. So scared. Just like Al did before he blinked out of existence right in front of me.

“Are you back with us Edward?” Granny Pinako asked, running a cloth over my forehead to mop up some of the panic-induced sweat.

I opened my mouth to respond and nothing came out. It seems one more thing was sacrificed in my quest to bring back the dead. I had no voice. Only time would tell if that was gone forever too.

A few seconds passed before I realized that they were both waiting for a response. I nodded slowly before slumping back into the pillows I’d just noticed were propped behind me.

At my non-verbal response, Granny Pinako’s eyes narrowed with pointed awareness. I expected the next thing out of her mouth. “Can you speak?”

Latching onto her eyes with my own, I gave an emphatic shake of my head. Her only response was a world-weary sigh followed by a slump in her shoulders.

After taking a second to collect herself, she places her tiny, wrinkled hand in my only remaining one and squeezes. “Yeah, I figured as much. You really are a troublesome child aren’t you?” She says with a sad little smile on her face.

“Ed?” Comes Winry’s hesitant and tear-filled voice from my right. I turn my head to look at her, the shame of what I’d done to my brother slithering through my heart again as I’m faced with the worried gaze of the girl we both vowed to marry not two years ago.

“What happened?”

I looked down, my bangs falling into my face to cover my eyes. My only response was the hot tears that burned their way down my cheeks and into my lap.

~

It was another three days before I rediscovered my voice.

We were sitting in the workshop—all three of us. Even Den was curled up under the chair where Winry was working away at what was to become my new arm and leg.

“We just wanted to fix it. To make it so we wouldn’t be alone anymore.” The admission slipped out of my mouth in a defeated whisper, but it impacted the comfortable silence in the room like an alchemic explosion.

“We just wanted to bring Mom back and instead, all I managed to do was kill him too.”

The truth of my statement, of just how badly I fucked up—of how _irreversible_ some fuckups truly are—settled painfully into my chest.

I killed Alphonse. I got arrogant. I thought I could do anything—we both did—and Alphonse paid the price for it.

“I’m his older brother” I squeaked out through trembling lips. “I was supposed to protect him—protect _us_ and instead I got him killed trying to do something impossible.” As my situation came fully into focus and the realities of what I had done truly sunk in hot tears started slipping rapidly down my face.

Granny Pinako, who had been looking over a client’s maintenance request, set the papers down on the table in front of her. “Edward” she said, her voice firm. “What’s done is done. You, more than anyone, know now that death is an insurmountable obstacle—that we can never recover those people we lose along the way. But the question now, is are you gonna lose yourself along the way too?”

I knew that she spoke only the truth, but one thing she didn’t consider is that with Mom and Alphonse dead—and with my bastard of a father _gone_ ―there was very little of myself left to lose.

With time, and the purpose that was approaching like the sedate breeze before a storm, I would come to understand just how true my loss of self was, and just how limitless one’s potential is when you have to rebuild yourself from scraps.

~

Mustang came calling the very next day, looking for the promising young alchemists he’d heard so many whispers of.

He was not pleased. This surprised precisely no-one, there were rules against what we did for a reason after all.

What _was_ surprising, however, was the strangely knowing glint in his eyes. A glint that revealed more than anyone who hadn’t been to the other side of the gate and back ever would have noticed.

I guess that’s the point though. I * _did*_ notice. And so did _he_. Truth leaves a mark on those who trespass after all. And both of us were marked to high hell.

“Who was it?” The words slipped through my lips as soon as the morbid shock of meeting someone else like me had dissipated.

The crazed look that had overtaken his features upon recognizing Truth’s mark in a child less than half his own age leveled out only to be replaced by an assessing one that looked much more natural on him.

“So you _can_ see it. The mark.” He intoned. “Well, I guess that’s no surprise. Age doesn’t matter to that thing—and we, both of us, have transgressed. Haven’t we Edward?”

The question was rhetorical, both of us knew that. Mine wasn’t though, and It didn’t escape me that he didn’t immediately answer my question. My eyes must have betrayed my expectation that he respond for with a weary sigh he told me.

“He was…He was a lot of things. A friend, a brother, a lover, a leash…He kept me grounded when I was surrounded by what I thought I knew to be hell—even if the flames I found myself surrounded by were of my own making.” The wry amusement on his face, visible in the almost imperceptible upward tilt to his lips, told me that last sentence was one he’d had thrown in his direction a million times. Probably by his dead man. His Alphonse. “I know now that what I was living—what I was manifesting—wasn’t hell” he stated as his eyes drifted off to the left contemplatively. He snapped back from his tangent before it could properly begin. “His name was Maes. Maes Hughs. And all that really matters to people like us is that he was my catalyst. Just like your brother was yours.”

These words tugged at something in my brain—or maybe even in my soul. Either way, it was clear that that word. Catalyst. Was something I recognized because Truth wanted me to. Such a realization was not a comforting one, but the time for comfort disintegrated alongside my brother so I pushed forward with the question I knew Mustang was waiting for.

“What do you mean he—they—were our catalysts? Catalysts for what?”

The weight that descended upon him with that question was outstripped only by the age that suddenly appeared in his eyes. “That, Edward, _i_ _s_ the question, isn’t it? What did we become when we went through _actual_ hell? And how did we escape?” He paused for a second as if to gather himself before focusing completely on me—all of that weight slamming into me like a tidal wave. “The truth is” he paused there, a sick sense of disgusted amusement at his own turn of phrase briefly flashing across his face, “that we’re Balancers. Our actions, our arrogance, came with more than just the price we paid upfront. Yes, we lost tangible things—you, your brother, your limbs, and your innocence. Me…something else—but we also gave up our lives as they were. Now, we have responsibilities. Now, the balance we so sought to flout is our responsibility. Our burden to maintain.”

A sense of dread was wiggling into my heart.

“What do you mean our burden?”

“I mean what I said, Edward. We maintain. We balance a world that is constantly tipping from one side of the scale to the other because humans cannot learn to live as we should—as every other living thing on the face of this planet does. We’re the constants on either side of the equation. The only uncertainty in this is what variable you’ll find yourself attached to.”

The sheer gravity of what was tumbling from Mustang’s mouth would have induced panic had I not exhausted that emotion in the previous days. Instead, my heart continued to beat evenly even as the impending sense of doom grew in the pit of my stomach.

“Each of us” he continued “has a responsibility. An aspect if you will, and we remain tied to that aspect indefinitely. Working to ensure that the actions of others do not permanently disrupt the balances of the universe. Well, this universe anyway.” A bitter smirk appeared on his lips “my aspect sees me forever tied to the very thing that took Hues from me. War. It’s the only reason I’m still with the military.” That pronouncement may as well have been nuclear for all the impact it had.

“How is what you’re saying _possible?_ ” I pleaded with him.

He cut a quick look my way that was both pitying and admonishing “It just is.”

The finality of that statement was definite. And the basis of my return from rock bottom—my self-reconstruction—began then and there.

~

**Meanwhile, under Central City**

He woke with a scream on his lips. The feeling of being atomized and reconstructed cell by cell left him shaking in a pool of his own sweat. Around him sparks of blue and red lightning struck the ground irregularly, signifying the dispersal of the energy used to reconstruct an entire human being.

_Where am I?! What’s going on? What the hell just happened to me?!_

Thoughts blunted by lingering pain and spasming muscles swirled rapidly through his head leaving behind a sense of panicked confusion and absolutely _no_ answers.

Before he had a chance to compose himself a deep voice, dripping with self-assurance, rang out. “Rise my child.”

Startled by the sudden instructions, the boy looked up from his place sprawled on the ground, his blond hair falling in an unruly tangle around his head.

_Child? Is that my father?_

Blue eyes met an almost identical pair as they took in the form of a man draped in white. He was surrounded by a ragtag group of people—seven of them—each one emitting an unsettling aura of menace.

“We’ll boy?” The man in white prompted blandly. At this, one of the seven approaches the befuddled boy “Are you defective?” they bite out snidely while leaning down to stare the boy in the face. They lean back and yell obnoxiously over their shoulder, dismissing the boy on the ground in seconds. “Hey, Father! I think it’s broken! You might wanna get rid of this one and try again!”

The frightening premise of having to be deconstructed _again_ spurs the boy on the ground to speak. “I’m not defective.” As confused as the boy was, something deep in his soul told him he was exactly as he was supposed to be—exactly _where_ he was supposed to be.

“Well,” the person standing closest to the boy drawls, a dangerous grin “I guess you ain’t broken after all!”

“Envy, that’s enough,” the man in white intones from his place draped upon his throne “it is time to name this new child of mine.” The newly identified Envy’s eyes widen in something approaching shock. “ _Name_ him? You mean you didn’t already have a name in mind when you made him? An aspect?” The incredulity in Envy’s voice was poorly disguised. As was his jealousy.

“Father said that’s enough Envy. _You_ wouldn’t want to be deemed defective and replaced for your insubordination, now would you?” This threatening admonishment came from the black-haired woman standing to the right of the Blond Man’s chair, her voice deceptively calming. The boy wasn’t fooled. These people were dangerous. All of them.

Something in his mind whispered darkly that he was too.

It was that thought that finally saw the boy rise from his prone position. His movement drew the whole room’s attention, stopping the bickering pair in their tracks and leaving his naked form on clear display.

He didn’t notice.

Instead, his attention was drawn to the mark the size of an apple resting on his right hip. It sparkled an effervescent blue, seeming to brighten and darken randomly as if pulsing with its own heartbeat.

“Well now, aren’t you quite the little curiosity?” Mused the man on the throne.

~

In a space that is both everywhere and nowhere a Cheshire grin slid sly across a blank, featureless, face as a gleeful thought flits through blank white space

_My, My, My… They have_ no _idea_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! It has been almost a year since I first posted this story. It isn't dead! As you can see, it just took a while to get back around all things considered! I hope you enjoy this bit of world and character building! Please leave your honest reviews! I love feedback!

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is in the beginning stages of development (I have no idea where it's going yet) but I'm open to feedback and constructive criticism. I know this is really just a teaser, but let me know if what you see is intriguing.
> 
> See you next time!


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